2011-03-07 - Thamesford, ON - Rectangle

Bright, unidentified hovering object, Thamesford, Ontario

I was driving eastward on Highway 401, heading to Toronto and had just passed Chatham, Ontario, when my car began to shake violently, forcing me to exit the highway. My husband was in the passenger seat and my daughter and her boyfriend were in the back seat. I thought that either the engine was acting up or I had blown a tire. Luckily we were able to get off the highway quickly as the exit was not far from where our car began to shake. Once we were on the ramp to exit, the car immediately began to drive smoothly as if there was nothing wrong.

We drove to the nearest service station where my husband checked the tires and then under the hood trying to find the cause of the shaking which had ceased on the exiting ramp. He couldn't find anything wrong with the tires and everything looked fine under the hood. He checked the oil level and it was down a quart so he added some new oil.

We decided to continue our trip on a smaller, less travelled highway (Highway 2) which ran through small towns and cities, just in case we were to run into car problems. We passed through London Ontario and approached Thamesford Ontario. My daughter noticed a very bright light in the night sky through the front car window. She described it as being a "very large bright star" and it confused her because "it was 20 times brighter than any other star in the sky". My husband assured her that it was most likely an airplane and that it would be gone within a few minutes.

As we drove closer to this bright object, we all realized that it was not moving at all and was just hovering about 100 to 150 feet above someone's farm property at the east end of the town. Because I was driving, I did not get a very good clear look at the object as we passed by it (it was to my left, now just north of the highway, but my daughter, her boyfriend and my husband were able to get a much better view and were able to fix their eyes on it for about fifteen or more seconds. Here is our description of the actual object: It appeared to be rectangular shaped (the colour and material was difficult to determine as it was nighttime), about 40 to 50 feet long and 20 to 30 feet wide, with many bright lights including 2 large white headlights, a red pulsating light at the back and a few bluish lights on the side. Because it was higher than us, we didn't see the top of it, but the bottom (floor) of it had about 8 or 10 'panel-like sections'. Because it was so low to the ground, we assumed at first the possiblity of it being a helicopter, but after observing it's shape and size, the extremely bright and colourful lights and it's lack of any sound, we immediately realized that it couldn't have been a helicopter or any other familiar aircraft for that matter.

I continued to drive for a few minutes eastward on Highway 2 but turned around and headed back towards Thamesford hoping to stop and get possible video footage of the object. When we reached the area where we had seen the object, it was no longer there nor anywhere in the sky. This confused us because, under normal circumstances, something this large and bright would have remained visible in the sky for a long period of time, and there were no airports nearby.